The Statement of Dr Zelinka
by The-Grid
Summary: Adapted from HP Lovecraft's The Statement of Randolph Carter. Any and all credit goes to him and MGM for the use of SGA stuff. Radek and Rodney are messing with things they should not be. and get into trouble. I wouldn't be evil if i told you the truth.


The Statement of Dr. Radek Zelinka

By: Hanakoaki

(Adapted from The Statement of Randolph Carter written by HP Lovecraft 1919)

I already told you, I don't know what happened to Rodney McKay, I hope he is dead and at peace and not another, more gruesome, alternative. Granted I am probably not his closest friend for the past five years, and I do share some credit to his research into the unknown. I'm not going to deny, even though I can't remember anything, that I was the last person to see him. And that we were together on that planet half past 11 that night.

We had our flashlights, shovels, radios, and a long coil of rope. I tell you the truth, that we did have these things, they played an immense part in the single scene that is burned into my memory from that night. But what happened after and why I was found alone at the gate clearing I have no recollection. I insist that I have told you everything I know, over and over. You keep telling me there was nothing on that planet that fits what I have described, and I keep telling you all that I saw. Hallucination, or delusion, I hope it was- yet that is all I remember of the hours after he left my sight. And why Dr. McKay did not return, he—or some nameless thing I cannot begin to describe—alone can tell.

As I have already told you before, what Dr. McKay was studying was well know and to an extent shared by me. He found this library of strange, rare books on unnamable topics, and I have read every one that I possessed the knowledge to read, but Rodney's languages were much more vast than mine. He had one book that I had no comparison to the characters that it contained. Always kept it in is pocket and never let it out of sight. Rodney never told me what that book contained. Now with the research—must I insist that I hold no full comprehension? I think it merciful that I do not grasp the meaning of those studies, **ones that I continued out of some reluctant fascination rather than inclination.** Rodney always pushed me, and can be quite intimidating. I recall how I shivered at the look on his face the night before this happened, when he was going on about why some corpses never decayed, but were completely intact in their tombs for thousands of years with out some sort of stasis. He is not so intimidating now, as I fear he has seen horrors far outside my understanding. Now I fear for him.

Once more I have to state that I have no idea why we departed the group on that planet. It had to have had something to do with that blasted book in his pocket and always carried with him—the ancient book with the characters that he had found a couple months ago—but I swear that I don't know what we were expecting to find on that planet. Your witness says were left the group on that planet and wandered off at half past 11. It is most likely true, but I have no memory. **The picture seared into my soul is of one scene only, and the hour must have been long after midnight; for a waning crescent moon was high in the** cloudless sky.

The place he led us to was a very, very old cemetery of some kind. So old **that I** **trembled at the manifold signs of immemorial years.** What we found was in a hallow that was overgrown with this vine, mossy grass, and filled with this smell that I can only describe as **rotting stone**. The entire place was filled with neglect and dilapidation, and it set me on edge the fact that Rodney and I were the first living things the set foot in this place for centuries. The moon was peaking over the valley's rim and seemed to intensify the light fog that had settled around our feet, and gave an almost wavering light to the **antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausoleum facades**; **all crumbling, moss-grown, and moisture stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation. **

My first intense imprint **in this terrible necropolis concerns the act of pausing with** Rodney ** before a curtain half-obliterated sepulcher and of throwing down some burdens which we seemed to have** with us. We each seemed to have a shovel, and a flashlight, and a radio, and we seemed to know what to do without words. So we started to clear out the odd room of dirt and vegetation. After finally uncovering the whole room, which was nothing more than three huge granite slabs, we studied our work. Rodney appeared to be working out some calculations. Then he returned to the sepulcher, and started to pry the slab closest to some pile of stone open with his shovel. I imagined that the pile was a monument at one time long ago. His efforts were wasted as the slab did not move so I placed mine next to his and together we were rewarded with the sound of the rock moving against its self. Placing the slab to the side was studied what we had unveiled.

**The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture; from which rushed an effluence of miasmal gases so nauseous the we started back with horror. After some time, however, we approached the pit again, and found the exhalations less unbearable, our **flashlights **disclosed the top of a flight of stone steps, dripping with some detestable ichor of the inner earth, and bordered by moist walls encrusted with niter. ** Finally, my memory starts to remember sound in the manner of Rodney telling me about what we have just uncovered.

"I want you the stay here Radek." He tells me, "But it would be beyond even my malicious nature to let someone as nervous as you go down there. **You can't imagine, even from what you have read and what I've told you, things I shall have to see and do. It's fiendish work, **Radek,** and I doubt if any man without ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through and come up sane. I don't wish to offend you, and Heaven knows I'd be glad enough to have you with me; but the responsibility is in a certain sense mine, and I couldn't drag a bundle of nerves like you down there to probable death or madness. I tell you, you can't imagine what the thing is really like! But I promise to keep you informed over the **radio** of every move—** You see I've boosted the signal of our radios and brought enough rope to get to the center of this planet and back!"

The tone of his voice still haunts me, his words. I had wanted to accompany him into that black hole of stairs, but on that he was unmovable; he would not let me. Even threatened to call the whole thing off—although now I wish he had. That worked since he was the only one with a key to the thing. I remember all this, but cannot remember what that thing is that was sought. After he had my acceptance he picked up the rope, more wire now that I think about it. A nod from me as I took one end and he shock my hand and shouldered the wire and was off, disappearing into the depths of the unknown. I sat and waited on some crumbled old stone and for a minute I could still see his flashlight bouncing it's way in front of him along with the **rustle of the wire as he laid it down behind him; but the glow soon disappeared abruptly, as if a turn in the stone staircase had been encountered**, followed buy the disappearance of the sound of wire hitting ground. I was left alone, only connected to him by the wire I was clutching in my hand.

I kept looking down to my watch, waiting for a sound to come over the radio. Waited for the better part of a quarter of an hour and only received silence. Then I heard a clicking on the radio and called out to Dr. McKay. I wasn't ready for the voice that answered back. He sounded alarmed and almost shaky. He was so calm when he left, **now called from below in a shaky whisper more portentous than the loudest shriek:**

"**God if you could see what I am seeing!"**

**I could not answer. Speechless, I could only wait. Then came the frenzied tones again:**

"Radek **it's terrible—monstrous—unbelievable!"**

**This time my voice did not fail me, and I poured into the transmitter a flood of excited questions. Terrified, I continued to repeat, "**Rodney, **what is it? What is it?"**

His voice came once more,** still hoarse with fear, and now apparently tinged with despair:**

"**I can't tell you,** Radek**! It's too utterly beyond thought—I dare not tell you—no man could know it and live—Great God! I never dreamed of this!"**

**Stillness again, save for my now incoherent torrent of shuddering inquiry. Then the voice of **Rodney ** in a pitch of wilder consternation:**

"Radek**! for the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if you can! Quick!—leave everything else and make for the outside—it's your only chance! Do as I say, and don't ask me to explain!"**

**I heard, yet was able to only repeat my frantic questions. Around me were tombs and the darkness and the shadows; below me, some peril beyond the radius of the human imagination. But my friend was in greater danger than I, and though I fear I felt a vague resentment that he should seem me capable of deserting him under such circumstances. More clicking, and after a pause a piteous cry from **Rodney:

"**Beat it! For God's sakes, put back the slab and beat it, **Radek!"

**Something in the boyish slang of my evidently stricken companion unleashed my faculties. I formed and shouted a resolution, "**Rodney, **brace up! I'm coming down!" But at this offer the tone of my auditor changed to a scream of utter despair:**

"**Don't! You can't understand! It's too late—and my own fault. Put back the slab and run—there's nothing else you or anyone else can do now!"**

**The tone changed again, this time acquiring a softer quality, as of hopeless resignation. Yet remained tense thought anxiety for me:**

"**Quick—before it's too late!"**

**I tried not to heed him; tried to break through the paralysis which held me, and to fulfill my vow to rush down to his aid. But his next whisper found me still held inert in the chains of stark horror.**

"Radek—**hurry! It's no use—you must go—better one than two—the slab—"**

**A pause, more clicking, than the faint voice of **Dr. McKay**:**

"**Nearly over now—don't make it harder—cover up those damned stairs and run for your life—you're losing time—so long, **Radek**—wont see you again."**

**Here **Rodney's **whisper swelled into a cry; a cry the gradually rose to a shriek fraught with all the horror of the ages—**

"**Curse these hellish things—legions—My God! Beat it! Beat it! BEAT IT!"**

**After that was silence. I know not how many interminable eons I sat stupefied; whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into the that **radio. **Over and over again through those eons I whispered and muttered, called, shouted, and screamed, "**Rodney! Rodney! **Answer me—are you there!"**

**And then there came to me the crowning horror of all—the unbelievable, unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing. I said that eons seemed to elapse after **Rodney **shrieked forth his last despairing warning, and that only my own cries now broke the hideous silence. But after a while there was a further clicking in the receive, and I strained my ears to listen. Again I called down. "**Rodney,** are you there?" and in answer heard the thing which brought this cloud over my mind. I do not try, gentlemen, to account for that thing—that voice—nor can I venture to describe it on detail, since the first words took away my consciousness and created a mental blank which reaches to the time of my awakening in the **infirmary. **Shall I say that the voice was deep, hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied? What shall I say? It was the end of my experience, and is the end of my story. I heard it, and knew no more—heard it as I sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, rank vegetation and the miasmal **fog—**heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable open sepulcher as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon.**

**And this is what it said:**

"**You fool, **Rodney** is DEAD!"**


End file.
